Bruce having encouraged his people by good words, increase of wages, and promises of reward, early the next morning they started to encounter the other half of the mountain. The baggage now moved on briskly. The upper part of the mountain was steeper, more craggy, rugged, and slippery than the lower, but not as much embarrassed by large stones and holes. "Our knees and hands," says Bruce, "were cut to pieces by frequent falls, and our faces torn by the multitude of thorny bushes. I twenty times now thought of what Achmet had told me at parting, that I should curse him for the bad road shown to me over Tarenta." However, with great difficulty they at last reached the summit, upon which they found a small village, chiefly inhabited by very poor people, who tend the flocks belonging to the town of Dixan. Salt sneers, as usual, at Bruce's description of the difficulties he encountered in ascending Tarenta. He says, "We did not meet with a single hyæna or troglodytical cave, and, luckily, 'had not _our hands and knees cut by frequent falls, or our faces torn by thorny bushes_,' which last, indeed, appears scarcely possible in so open and frequented a path." Now Bruce never said that the hyænas of Tarenta would find Mr. Salt, or that Mr. Salt would find the caves which Bruce says he went out of his path to see: yet, if Mr. Salt had ever read the following extract from the account of a journey made into Ethiopia (by Father Remedio of Bohemia, Martino of Bohemia, and Antonio of Aleppo, of the order of Reformed Minorites of St. Francis, missionaries for the propagation of the Christian faith), he would, perhaps, have hesitated before he ventured to accuse Bruce of exaggeration, more especially in regard to "the thorns and briers of Tarenta." "Our way" (from Masuah), says one of those fathers, "lay over high mountains, deep valleys, and through impenetrable woods, in passing which we encountered many dangers and grievous hardships. More than once we were obliged to climb the tops of the mountains on our hands and feet, which were sorely rent and torn with _brambles and thorny bushes_. No house nor inn being found here, everybody is obliged to lay in the open air, exposed to the depredations of robbers, and liable every moment to become the prey of wolves, lions, tigers, and beasts of a similar description, which are almost continually met with, of all which I shall cease to speak, from the horror and dread with which the very thought of them still afflicts me."